They didn’t really have any mother anyway; they hatched out in incubators and left home when they were a day old, to eat their first meal in the poultry yard of J.D. Sykes Jr. of this city. There were 2,000 of them, and they travelled in paper boxes, 100 of them in a box where partitions separated them into groups of 25. There were holes in the boxes, but the weather was warm and a tenth of them died on the way. The others climbed on the bodies of their famished comrades, got their mouths closer to the holes in the boxes and sang their way into the Elizabeth City post office.
This shipment of 2,000 Rhode Island Red chicks to Sykes’ Poultry farm was the largest ever to come to Elizabeth City. It was shipped from the Continental Hatcheries at Cincinnati, Ohio, and arrived here Wednesday morning by parcel post, costing the buyer 13 ½ cents apiece. Mr. Sykes will use the pullets for layers, and the roosters will be sold for table. Due to warm weather, 239 of them died on the way, but the remainder are vigorous and make lively companions for the 2,000 other chicks consisting of Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, etc., now on the Sykes Poultry Farm.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, June 9, 1922
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